Computer Modeling of Alzheimer’s Disease—Simulations of Synaptic Plasticity and Memory in the CA3-CA1 Hippocampal Formation Microcircuit

Abstract

This paper aims to present computer modeling of synaptic plasticity and memory in the CA3-CA1 hippocampal formation microcircuit. The computer simulations showed a comparison of a pathological model in which Alzheimer’s disease (AD) was simulated by synaptic degradation in the hippocampus and control model (healthy) of CA3-CA1 networks with modification of weights for the memory. There were statistically higher spike values of both CA1 and CA3 pyramidal cells in the control model than in the pathological model (p = 0.0042 for CA1 and p = 0.0033 for CA3). A similar outcome was achieved for frequency (p = 0.0002 for CA1 and p = 0.0001 for CA3). The entropy of pyramidal cells of the healthy CA3 network seemed to be significantly higher than that of AD (p = 0.0304). We need to study a lot of physiological parameters and their combinations of the CA3-CA1 hippocampal formation microcircuit to understand AD. High statistically correlations were obtained between memory, spikes and synaptic deletion in both CA1 and CA3 cells.

Keywords

• Alzheimer’s disease
• hippocampus
• LTP
• theta rhythm
• computer simulation